If there's one thing you should be leveraging in your marketing, it's story.
What does that mean? What does telling a story have to do with making sales?
Stories can be so powerful – certainly more powerful than “features and benefits” – but you need to appeal to your customers emotionally.
Marketing has to be humanized in some form. Tons of companies use this approach in their marketing.
Think about a company with a well-known spokesperson. How are they trying to sell the product to you? With their story.
An Emotional Appeal
Your customers need to be moved by you. How is that done?
With a f**king good story.
So, how do you know what makes a good story? What's effective? What's not?
It starts with you. Are you in touch with your emotions?
If you want to tell your story in a way that appeals to your customers' emotions, you have to understand your own. You have to take a good look at yourself – even the ugly parts. Sometimes you have to dig up old traumas and get in touch with your past.
Now, I'm not saying you have to have a full-on therapy session with your camera. But you do have to be able to open up and be honest about your past and your story with your audience.
Look for defining moments in your life. Make a timeline of your life and look for the high points and low points.
“I never tell a story without making a point, and I never make a point without telling a story.”
Learning Through Story
Have you ever been talking to someone and realize they're not listening to you at all? Think about how you were communicating with them.
Were you just talking AT them? Or telling them a story?
As humans, we were raised to listen to stories. It's how we are programmed. Growing up, our parents didn't tell us facts and figures, they told us stories.
That's how we learn.
But the stories we use in marketing aren't quite the same as the stories we might have heard growing up.
So, what's the formula? What kind of story do you need to tell to connect with your audience and sell your product?
You need the basic story formula – a beginning, middle, and end:
What it was like, what happened, and what it's like now.
The best stories are victorious journeys. Emotional journeys.
You need to tap into your customers' emotions. Now, there is a whole spectrum of emotions out there – how do you know which ones to appeal to?
At your low point, what emotions were you feeling?
Fear, doubt, anger, shame, exhaustion, pain – all of these are emotions you want to play to in your stories. Because more likely than not, your customers are feeling those emotions right now. That's why they're looking for your product in the first place.
If you can connect with your customer on that deep level, they will love you for it. You'll start to get what I like to call:
Raving Fans
When you have raving fans, that's when you know you're doing something right.
You can get raving fans just by being relatable and authentic, but there are other things you can do to push the throttle into overdrive with this.
How? By being controversial. By polarizing your audience. Yeah, you'll get haters, but where there are haters there are also ride-or-die supporters.
Think about current events. What companies, public figures, or news stories get the most attention?
The ones that divide. The ones that get people going.
Look at Donald Trump. Everyone has an opinion on Trump – you either love him or hate him. Why?
Well, if you take a look at his Twitter feed, you would probably understand.
He polarizes people. He takes a side on controversial issues. Some people agree with him, some don't. They're all very vocal.
Look at the news cycle on any given day – it's dominated by Trump. A single tweet from him can spark thousands of news articles and hours of screentime on cable news networks.
Whether you love him or hate him, you know who he is. You know what he's about.
What about companies that do this? When Nike supported Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem in protest, people got fired up. Some folks were sharing videos of themselves having Nike bonfires. On the flip side, there were troves of people who went out and spent thousands of dollars on Air Jordans.
How about Chick-fil-A? They make their stance on marriage equality very clear. And yeah, they lost business. People boycotted them. But conservative Christians came out in droves to buy chicken sandwiches because they agreed with the company's message. Hell, they might not even like those chicken sandwiches, but they showed up at the drive-thru the next day to show their support.
It's a risk to polarize your audience, sure. But where there are haters, there are raving fans. And the raving fans are the ones who are gonna pay your bills.
Conclusion
By now, you surely understand how powerful storytelling can be in your marketing.
When you use storytelling effectively, you'll see just how impactful a good story is. A clear, concise, compelling story can be the rocket fuel that helps your business take off.
All of the things I talked about above make a good story, but it needs to be easy for your audience to listen to and understand. When I speak at events or write a sales letter, I follow a general format. A great sales letter has:
- Headline
- Lead
- Story
- Bullets (Features/Benefits or Results)
- Call-to-Action or Close
If you frame your sales letters or videos in a similar way, you'll start pulling in those raving fans.
So, go out there and tell your story.
Stay Legendary.
Learn more about how to craft a compelling story when you sign up for my 15 Day Online Business Builder Challenge. Click Here for more information.
What’s your story? Leave a comment below and let me know!
